Introducing Live Models

Unlike ElastiCube models, Live models run queries directly against the data source. With live connections, you can refresh your dashboards manually or set them to refresh automatically every few seconds. This provides you with near real-time data updates in your dashboard, meaning that in a lot of cases the queries are only as fast as the data source. (Except when an identical query is performed within the cache timeout period.)

Note:

See Choosing the Right Data Model for detailed information about how to choose the best type of data model for your business requirements.

The most significant difference between dashboards built on ElastiCubes and dashboards connected to Live data sources is how the load is managed. With an ElastiCube, you refresh the data when you build an ElastiCube and query the ElastiCube, not the data sources that define your ElastiCube. With Live connections, queries are run against the data source itself. This means that you do not have to wait for an ElastiCube to finish building before you see the results. However, your data source must be able to handle the potential load of multiple refreshes.

Watch this video about live data modeling:

To create dashboards built on Live connections, you create Live models. These data models include connection and credential details to the data sources.

After you have created your live model, you publish it. Publishing the live model adds it to your list of data sources from which you can select when working with dashboards.

Watch this short video about connecting to live data:

See the Live Data Source Connectors section of Data Source Connectors for a list of the supported connectors.

Limitations

The following features aren't supported in Live connections:

  1. R formulas

  2. Certain analytical functions such as Mode and Standard Deviation.

  3. Changing Live data sources from dashboards.

The following 17 data types are supported for Live users:

  • BIGINT
  • BOOLEAN
  • CHAR
  • DATE
  • DECIMAL
  • DOUBLE
  • FLOAT
  • INTEGER
  • NUMERIC
  • REAL
  • SMALLINT
  • TIME
  • TIME_WITH_TIMEZONE
  • TIMESTAMP
  • TIMESTAMP_WITH_TIMEZONE
  • TINYINT
  • VARCHAR

You can add unsupported data types, by manually casting those fields with a custom column or a custom import query. For more information, see Importing Data with Custom Queries.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q : I cannot connect to my data source.

A : As the connection is live, the data source must be available for Sisense to connect. Also, if your credentials changes, you must update your data set so Sisense can continue to connect and refresh the data.

Q : After entering a data set name, the Done button is not displayed:

A : Make sure the data set's name is unique. You cannot create data sets with the same name.